Follow the Money (14 page)

‘Drop it!’

Two sharp cracks, and when I looked up I saw Lester on his back, sprawled across the tiled path and he wasn’t moving.

I had grazed palms, bruised knees and torn trousers—pretty soft landing after facing a sawn-off. That didn’t mean I could go quietly inside and pour myself a congratulatory drink. The police arrived, then the media; mobile phone signals bounced around and I ended up in Chang’s Surry Hills office.

‘Thought it was about time we had a chat, Hardy,’ Chang said. ‘Lucky for you we were there, or lucky Ali was there—best pistol shot in the service.’

Ali was still wearing his displeased expression.

‘Thank you,’ I said.

‘You might like to help me with the paperwork.’

‘We’re getting whispers that Freddy Wong’s not around, and now his crazy brother comes after you. We also know Sabatini flew back home today.’

‘Is this a formal interview?’

‘No, come on, Hardy. You’re up to your balls in something too big for you. I had to talk fast to keep DI Caulfield off your case—being present at two violent deaths tends to make people suspicious. Sheer stroke of luck that now you’re not just down the way from your place in the bloody morgue.’

All true, and Malouf/Habib hadn’t rung. Maybe he wouldn’t. Maybe Lester’s death, which was bound to be on the news that night, would scare him off. When I thought about it, our plan for something Sabatini could write was our best chance of provoking him and that would bring the police running anyway. It was time to come clean—well, cleanish.

I told them Freddy Wong was definitely dead, and that three people (that was stretching it a bit) whom I wouldn’t name were present. I said it was somewhere between an accident and self-defence.

Ali shot an astonished look at Chang. ‘Can you believe this guy?’

‘There’s more,’ I said.

I told them that a man calling himself Richard Malouf had spoken to me on the phone, the deal he’d proposed and that he said he’d be in touch. I said that I was working with Sabatini and that we’d uncovered evidence to suggest that his real name was William Habib. I started to talk about the plan Sabatini and I had, but Ali cut me off with a snort of derision and an angry slap of his hand against the wall.

Chang, making notes, fiddled with his pen. ‘You didn’t think to get in touch with us when you got this call?’

‘Thought about it, but, no, I didn’t.’

‘Why not?’ Ali snapped.

‘I got into this to try to get a couple of gangsters off the back of a client . . .’

‘You don’t have the right to have a fucking client,’ Chang said.

‘A certain person, then. To help someone in a difficult situation.’

‘And recover the money Malouf stole from you,’ Ali said.

I shrugged. ‘If it worked out that way, sure. But that’s not the real reason.’

Ali shook his head. ‘All right, what is?’

I knew. It was to do with a missing person, a false identity, something unknown at the heart of the matter. And it was about doing something I’d been doing for a long time and was good at; about not feeling useless. But it was difficult to put all that into words.

‘Curiosity,’ I said.

Ali walked out of the room.

Chang leaned back in his chair. ‘What am I going to do with you? Cancerous—that was the word he used, right?’

‘Right.’

‘What does it mean?’

‘It’s a metaphor.’

‘I know it’s a fucking metaphor. So?’

I shrugged. ‘Something that’ll eat . . . away at society.’

‘Doesn’t cancer sort of overwhelm the other cells in the body?’

‘I think you’re right. Whatever it refers to it’s something very big. He sounded serious. I’ve been thinking about you and the sergeant: a special unit to combat Chinese and Lebanese crime? There have to have been whispers, signs of something brewing. Look, without giving you the details, Freddy Wong was prepared to do something horrific to another person just to get some information. And this Malouf/Habib—he knows what’s going on, he has a connection to Houli and is prepared to double-cross him. That takes guts and it suggests that the business, whatever it is, has got too big, is getting out of control.’

Chang glanced down at the notes he’d been scribbling while I talked. ‘Tell me again about this deal.’

I went over it but I’d remembered another detail.

‘He knew your name and the name of your bad-tempered mate—not that I’m not grateful to him for saving my life.’

‘But he hasn’t called you back. We can’t find any trace of that boat. It could be registered in Panama or Tuvalu, where they don’t give a shit about any rules or regulations.’

‘He knew too much about our movements to be some- where offshore. He’s around, watching, listening, waiting.’

‘So he could know that you’re here, talking to me?’

I said nothing but I looked at the door Ali had slammed behind him.

Chang closed his eyes. Without those keen eyes enlivening his face he looked older, more weary. ‘He’s a good man. He saved your life.’

‘He shot a Chinaman. Where did he get him?’

‘Head and heart.’

‘Head to kill; heart to be sure. Would he shoot a Malouf or a Habib?’

‘You’re a pain in the arse, Hardy,’ Chang said, ‘undermining the integrity of a trusted officer.’ He looked at his notes again. ‘He cut you off when you started to talk about your plan with Sabatini. If he’s . . . on the other side, why wouldn’t he want to hear all about that?’

‘Because he wouldn’t want
you
to hear about it, and he
would
want to catch me on my own.’

Chang glanced around the room as if help could be found in the filing cabinets, the bookshelves, the citations on the walls. There’s no help there as we both knew: it comes down to decisions, guesses, risks to be taken. I knew then, as I’d always known, that he was a good man who’d put the right thing to do up at the top of his agenda. But I had to give him a nudge.

‘Stephen,’ I said, ‘I couldn’t help noticing that you wrote your notes on our interview in Chinese characters. Do you always do that?’

‘Sometimes,’ he said. ‘Just sometimes.’

Chang called Ali back and we discussed the plan to provoke Malouf/Habib through an article Sabatini would write and post as a blog. We also talked about the possibility of striking a deal with Malouf/Habib in exchange for his exposing the grand scheme.

‘Cowboy stuff,’ Ali said. ‘We can’t guarantee immunity or anything like that.’

‘Why not?’ I said. ‘You’ve done it before.’

Chang nodded. ‘True, but by Jesus the information better be good.’

I said, ‘He’ll want details and help—a passport probably, maybe money, maybe a hostage.’

‘You seem to know a lot about his thinking,’ Ali said.

‘I’m just putting it together how I’d want it if it was my way out. If what he can reveal is as big as he says, he’ll have to run a long, long way.’

Chang smiled. ‘And not to Hong Kong or the Emirates. Where would you guess, Karim?’

I studied Ali closely. Was he thinking about how to deliver this information to Malouf/Habib, or were our suspicions all wrong? Impossible to tell; his handsome face was set in its customary sceptical expression when I was in the picture. He shrugged. ‘South America.’

‘Right,’ I said. ‘Brazil. The new Ronnie Biggs. The difficult part is to get a hint in Sabatini’s piece that the police are considering a deal. Just a hint.’

‘This is bullshit,’ Ali said. ‘I vote we round up Houli and Talat and tell them what we know and get them to tell us what this is all about. Do a deal with them if we must and fuck Malouf . . . or whatever his name is.’

Chang looked at me. ‘Hardy?’

‘It’s not a bad idea, but my guess is after what happened to the Wong boys, Houli and Talat will be very hard to find.’

Ali pulled out his mobile phone, wandered off to the other side of the room and made some calls. His responses were negative grunts.

Closing the phone, he said, ‘I hate to admit it, but you’re right—they’re lying very low.’

Chang looked down at the characters on his notepad. ‘Well, this looks like the only game in town, but I’m warning you, Hardy, you contact us the second you hear from Malouf. I’m calling him that until I learn otherwise. Try playing some independent smartarse game and you’ll have your next heart bypass in gaol.’

Ali liked that; it was the first time I’d seen him smile.

What we were proposing wasn’t really all that unusual or outrageous. There were journalists virtually embedded with the various police forces and intelligence agencies, and others who were leaked to systematically and operationally. There was a recent case where someone on the police or the intelligence strength had leaked to a paper about a planned raid on terrorist suspects. The paper did a deal with the operations leader not to publish until the raid was underway. Somehow the story got into print early, and the raid had to be moved forward. Things in that kind of world can go seriously wrong.

The only substantial contribution to Sabatini’s blog I made was the headline:

IS RICHARD MALOUF STILL ALIVE?

Readers will remember the case of the financial wizard Richard Malouf who managed to spirit away millions of dollars from his clients’ accounts, lose it gambling with figures in the Sydney underworld, and, apparently, die from a gunshot wound in his car. Suicide or murder? The coronial inquiry has yet to sit.

But it may be none of these things. Try faked death. A source close to a certain police task force investigating crime in the Chinese and Lebanese communities has told this writer that Malouf may still be alive. No details are available, other than that there have been as yet unverified ‘sightings’. More intriguing are hints that Malouf may not be the real name of the man in question. Questions to be answered: is he alive? If so, who was the dead man in the car and who killed him? And why does this writer get the feeling that in the minds of certain police there are bigger fish to fry than financial juggler, lothario and crack sportsman Richard ‘Dicky’ Malouf?

Sabatini sent me a draft of the article and I complimented him on it. I’d briefed him fully on my interview with Chang and Ali and I felt he’d struck the right notes.

‘You realise,’ he said, ‘that if your suspicions about this Sergeant Ali are right, it won’t matter. Malouf will know exactly how the land lies.’

‘When and if he rings I’ll try to trip him up on that.’

‘What if he doesn’t ring?’

‘I think he will. People can only play a double game for so long. He might feel safer now that Freddy Wong’s out of action but he might not. There could be someone worse in the wings. Same with Houli and Talat; he might think the stakes have gone up for them. A deal with the police, a version of witness protection, not that he’d be willing to bear witness, is his best chance.’

‘If the cops play it straight. D’you think they will?’

‘No. We have to be on our toes and it gets very complicated if Ali’s dirty. Are you worried about getting your story?’

‘No. I’m worried about Rosemary. She wants to come back.’

‘Tell her not yet.’

‘I have.’

‘Insist.’

‘How much luck have you had at insisting a woman do something she doesn’t want to do?’

I told him to be careful, lock his door, stay in company and keep the instant backup number Chang had given me close to hand. It didn’t seem likely that Houli would come after us, but it was possible. And Malouf/Habib himself might not make the quiet approach he’d spoken of. We still only had his word that he wasn’t involved in the death of the substitute. And what of his school chum on a lonely beach in the far north?

I got a call-waiting signal and rang off, after promising Sabatini I’d contact him immediately if it was our man. It wasn’t.

‘Cliff,’ Megan said, ‘what the hell have you been up to?’

Is that what it comes to—your children addressing you the way your parents did?

‘The usual,’ I said.

‘I saw the news and I recognised the house and the Falcon and that was you being bundled into the police car with the coat over your head. Did you shoot that man?’

‘No, he shot at me but he missed.’

‘You didn’t say anything about the case you were on involving men with shotguns.’

‘Don’t tell me I’m too old for it. I was too old for shotguns twenty years ago. We’re all too old for shotguns. There were developments, changes. Things got heavier. The car’s a bit of a mess; those pellets bugger up the duco.’

She let out an exasperated sigh. ‘Fuck the car. Anyway, you’re not up on a charge or anything?’

‘No.’

‘Is it still dangerous?’

‘Could be, but don’t worry, I’ve got allies.’

‘You once told me to be wary of allies because they tended to be balanced by enemies.’

‘Did I? That sounds glib.’

‘It is, but it’s good glib. Well, I wanted to tell you that you should call on Hank if you need help. I know I’m going back on what I said before, but I really don’t want to be one of those women who stop men from doing what they want to do. I can tell that Hank’s bored with the routine stuff and when he saw the news he lit up. He was energised. I prefer him like that and I told him so. Just take care, Cliff, and come and see us when you can.’

‘I will. How’s everything going?’

‘He’s kicking.’

‘He?’

‘Yep, a boy, and he just gave me a bloody great thump.’

Malouf/Habib rang me at noon precisely the following day.

‘You took your time,’ I said, ‘Richard, or is it William?’

He chuckled. ‘You’ve done some homework.’

‘Me and others. What made you decide to call? I thought you might have given up on the idea.’

‘No, you didn’t think that or anything like it. Never mind why, we’re here now.’

So much for my notion about tripping him up.

‘The police are interested in a deal,’ I said, ‘under certain conditions, naturally.’

‘Naturally, and you’re authorised to speak for them? I find that hard to believe.’

‘Just at this initial stage, to set the rules, then it’ll be out of my hands.’

‘Okay, what’re the conditions?’

I’d thrashed this out thoroughly with Chang and Ali, trying to guess not only what Malouf/Habib would accept, but what he’d anticipate in a negotiation. I wanted to avoid police-speak, but still get the flavour of a police arrangement across.

‘First, the name of the man identified as you, and some evidence that you didn’t kill him.’

‘Go on, I’m jotting this down.’

So to speak
, I thought. I could hear his fingers on a keyboard.

‘A solid indication of what this is all about. Some explanation of the word you used—cancerous.’

‘Mmm, and . . .?’

‘That’s all for now. They’ll want hard evidence, documents, emails, banking details, photographs, whatever, to back up what you say. Hard evidence against Selim Houli.’

The self-satisfied chuckle again. ‘Not against Freddy Wong?’

I had to be careful that he didn’t lead me into places I wasn’t prepared for.

‘The police assume you’re talking about organisations. They know Freddy Wong had connections far and wide. They assume you’ll have . . . relevant information about others.’

‘Who killed Freddy?’

The question caught me off-guard and I almost answered. I stopped myself and simply said that I wasn’t at liberty to say, but he got something out of my hesitation.

‘I’m guessing you were there and that’s why nutty Lester came after you. I’m guessing May or Sun Ling.’

‘Guess away.’

That was a nugget for me—he didn’t know where Sun Ling was, but he did know something about them. The more I heard from him the more I formed the opinion that he was a very dangerous man. There was something objective, analytical, about everything he said, as if he were attempting to anticipate two or three moves ahead and come out on top.

‘I assume you’re recording this, Hardy?’

I was. Chang had given me the equipment, but I didn’t respond.

‘You would be. That’s good. There’s no point in trying to trace the call though. This phone’ll soon be . . .’

‘At the bottom of the harbour?’

He laughed. ‘Good try. I’ll be brief and try to satisfy your conditions. The dead man was what you might call an undocumented person. He was a Lebanese relative of mine I . . . introduced into the country. He was working with me on this project until about the time I decided to go, as it were, freelance. Lester Wong killed him thinking he was me.’

‘That’s hard to prove, given that Lester’s dead.’

‘I can back it up, at least part of the way.’

Slippery
, I thought,
very slippery.

‘As for the other conditions, I’ll give you some names and let your . . . principals make what they will of them: Harvey Dong, Ah Pin, Mustafa Khalid and . . . let’s say, Grant Simmonds.’

I said, ‘That’s not much to go on,’ but I was talking to myself. He’d hung up.

I met Chang in Burton Place, the square down a level from Oxford Street. I had Googled the names and got results for three of them, not Grant Simmonds. I told him about the call and passed my printouts to him.

He stirred sugar into the long black he’d ordered and ignored the papers. ‘You didn’t get a hint about his source of information . . . locally?’

‘Not a clue. He’s very smart. You heard the recording, the one time I tried to trick him he was onto it like a shot.’

‘He says Lester killed the mystery man?’

‘Yeah, and that he can back it up. To use his words, “in part”.’

‘I found it hard to listen to; it sounded as if he played you like a fish.’

‘I doubt you’d have done any better.’

He pulled the sheets towards him and looked through them as he stirred his coffee. He was seeing that Harvey Dong and Ah Pin were Hong Kong criminals, the heads of gangs within the Triad structure. Mustafa Khalid was the leader of a Lebanese militia group involved in the intricacies of Middle Eastern politics. The governments of several states had declared him an outlaw and he and his followers were now best described as bandits with terrorist tendencies.

Chang looked up. ‘Nothing on Simmonds?’

‘No. I’m assuming your magnificent databases will turn up something.’

‘Sarcasm,’ he said, ‘a sign of insecurity, our profilers tell us. I’ll check on him.’

‘What do I tell Sabatini?’

‘Tell him nothing.’

‘What will you tell Ali?’

Chang shook his head, drained his coffee, got up and walked away.

I guessed that we were allies in deceiving our comrades and I remembered what Megan said I had told her about allies.